Where There's Life, There's Lies
by Wilusa
Summary: A 'back from the dead' Lodz gives Lila an explanation that bears little resemblance to the truth. This is a direct sequel to 'New Arrivals.'


DISCLAIMER: Carnivale and its canon characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.

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"Down, girl!" Lodz erupted in laughter as Lila pounced on him, almost before he had the trailer door closed. Ignoring his jacket, his dark glasses, even the lips and tongue that had pleasured her while they were still outside, his hirsute lover was going straight for his fly.

"But I've missed you so!" she panted.

"Patience, patience, my sweet." He clasped one of her hands, firmly moving it away from his private parts. "I take it the bed is where it always was?" Cane extended, he was already maneuvering her in that direction.

"Yes, yes!"

"All right. We're going to _sit_ on it -"

Lila moaned.

"And before we do anything else, I'm going to give you the explanation you've been asking for. Is that satisfactory?"

"I'd be willin' to wait," she purred into his ear, "an' have another kind o' satisfaction first."

Still chuckling, he pulled her down on the bed beside him. "No, I think I should begin by telling you what's been happening to me." _Or rather, by first finding out - cautiously - how much you already know._

He was relieved that she hadn't turned against him. But he wanted to get the chore of "explaining" over with, and the exact lies he'd tell would depend on what she believed now.

To his surprise, she said, "I should tell you - I think I may o' made a mistake."

He frowned. "A mistake? What sort of mistake?"

"I wanted to believe I'd see you again 'in the flesh' - truly, I did! But it seemed so unlikely, I guess I only half believed. Maybe not even that much.

"So I told everyone who'd listen the other thing you'd told me. That Hawkins had killed you, an' Samson covered it up. Was that wrong to do? It's gonna seem crazy, now that you're back."

Lodz was smiling. "No, it's not a problem. They'll just assume you were wrong." Thinking aloud, he continued, "I wish you'd been able to turn more of the carnies against them. Even if only to force Samson out. Young Hawkins would be much more vulnerable without him..."

Catching himself, he asked, "Did the girl Sofie seem to believe it?" _I wonder how much Sofie really understands?_

Lila pondered that for a moment. "I didn't get to tell her till she came back to us after New Canaan. An' then, I sort o' expected her to say, 'Ben would never do a thing like that!' But she didn't. She was real quiet, seemed willin' to consider it.

"That surprised me, 'cause she an' him had been gettin' close before she left." She snickered. "I think they'd been in the sack together - he was real put out when I told him she was gone. But come to think of it, she wouldn't o' left if she was in love with him."

"No, I suppose not." _"In the sack together"? And he was "put out" on learning she'd left? Interesting._

He went on, "Hawkins did kill me, of course. Do you understand why he did it?" _I sincerely hope not._

Lila said thoughtfully, "Well, you'd told me about his healin' powers. An' he has others that can be dangerous, right? Whether or not it was him caused the deaths in New Canaan.

"You were actin' on Management's behalf - tryin' to mentor him, teach him when an' how to use his powers. But Hawkins was an ingrate who just wanted to be left alone. I figured that when he came to the trailer, the night before that final night, he wanted to have it out with you, tell you to stop - as he saw it - harassin' him. But you couldn't stop. Management wouldn't let you. So the next night, Hawkins killed you."

Lodz nodded. "Exactly."

Privately, he heaved a sigh of relief. _She never connected it with Ruthie's snakebite. It didn't seem she had, when I last spoke with her. But I could hardly believe my good fortune._

_If Ruthie had told her the snake was in that bag of mending, she wouldn't have wanted to believe I'd had anything to do with it, but she would inevitably have remembered that mysterious purchase I made in town. So Ruthie must have decided that with me dead, it would be needlessly cruel to tell Lila something that would reflect badly on me._

He smirked. _You played right into my hands, Ruthie. Didn't anyone ever tell you that no good deed goes unpunished?_

Aloud, he went on, "I assume you know Management died while the carnival was in Damascus?"

"Yeah." Lila added proudly, "But Samson only admitted it after I forced the issue, by goin' into the trailer an' findin' no one there."

"Good for you!" Lodz gave her an affectionate squeeze. "But you probably don't know _how_ Management died. Hawkins killed him too."

"What?" Now she sounded genuinely frightened. "Wh-why?"

"For essentially the same reason he'd killed me," Lodz lied smoothly. "Management took over the task of trying to mentor the boy. He sometimes used Samson as a go-between, but he had to become more personally involved than he did when I was available.

"He wanted to assure that Hawkins would use his powers for good. But the boy still regarded all efforts to guide him as harassment." Shaking his head in mock sorrow, he concluded, "So he killed another man who'd only wanted to help him."

"B-but...how could he do it?" Lila asked. "Wasn't Management some kind o' powerful being himself?"

"Physically, he was a frail old man," Lodz explained. "His mental powers were much more developed than Hawkins'. But it was easy for the boy to catch him off guard, because he wasn't expecting an attack from that quarter.

"Until then, rude and ungrateful as he was, Hawkins had only wanted - as you said - to be left alone. Ironically, killing Management made him more powerful than he'd been before, and less restrained. He acquired Management's powers, but not his sense of responsibility in using them."

Lila cursed under her breath. Then she asked, "How does this tie in with your bein' able to come back from the dead?"

"One thing at a time," he told her. "But I'll give you a hint. You do know Justin Crowe came back? There's a connection."

"My God," Lila whispered. "I was never convinced he'd really been dead!"

"Oh yes, he was," Lodz assured her. "How much do you know about him, and Hawkins' feud with him?"

"Not much," she said soberly. "The story that got around was that he'd had Hawkins' father kidnapped, an' murdered him. But I found it hard to believe, what with Crowe bein' a preacher an' Hawkins bein'...what I knew he was.

"Supposedly, Hawkins started performin' healings in New Canaan because he wanted to win Crowe's followers away from him. Crowe came after him, an' they had a fight. When we left New Canaan, everyone was sayin' Hawkins was badly wounded, Crowe dead. But Hawkins had snapped back by the next day, an' him an' Crowe was both talkin' to reporters.

"I know there were thousands o' unexplained deaths in New Canaan. But I figured the tale o' the two men's actual fight had been exaggerated."

"It wasn't," Lodz said flatly. "But there's more to it than you know.

"Crowe, like Hawkins, possesses supernatural powers. But powers can be used in different ways. As you said, Crowe chose to become a preacher - which tells us a good deal about him." _It tells me he was guided to choose the perfect cover._ "And Hawkins was a fugitive from the law, wanted for murder, even before he joined Carnivale.

"I think the story about Hawkins' father was a lie, an excuse for his vendetta." _And you've provided me with a good "explanation" to put in its place._ "Hawkins went after Crowe because Sofie had left him to become Crowe's disciple. It didn't matter that there was no sexual element in her relationship with Crowe, or that he hadn't known her before she joined his flock in California. She'd left Hawkins, and he saw her as _his_."

"But he's not with her now," Lila objected. "He's with Ruthie."

"That doesn't surprise me," Lodz said, without missing a beat. "He wouldn't want Sofie back as his lover after she'd deserted him. In fact, he'd want to punish her by _not_ taking her back. But he wasn't willing to let Crowe have her! Or to give her her freedom. She's probably only staying with Carnivale now because he has her under his thumb, intimidated."

He didn't believe a word he was saying. But Lila's revelation about Ben and Sofie had shown him the perfect way to cast young Hawkins as a villain.

"And you weren't told the truth about Hawkins' intentions in New Canaan," he went on. _Parts of the truth actually can be made to sound damning._ "I assume you've learned recently that he needs 'life-force' for healings?"

"Y-yes," she said slowly.

"In New Canaan, he was drawing all of it from Crowe! Trying to kill him, in a particularly cowardly way. But Crowe was able to resist, and pursue him into that cornfield.

"I don't know whether Crowe was still weak from what Hawkins had done to him. But Hawkins was armed with a military-issue dagger, and Crowe only had a gardening tool he'd managed to grab. That alone could explain Hawkins' being able to kill him."

Predictably, Lila said, "Terrible!"

Lodz suppressed a smile. _This is almost too easy._

"So how was Crowe brought back to life?" she asked. "And how did it affect you?"

"I'm speculating here," he said earnestly. _In fact, I'm lying through my teeth. But I think this lie will be more believable if I present it as speculation._ "Hawkins had killed Crowe. He had triumphed. But it wasn't enough. I think he wanted more. Perhaps he was dissatisfied because he'd used a knife, like an ordinary thug.

"So as the carnival was leaving New Canaan, he reached out with his mind, and used his powers to kill Crowe's followers. He may not have intended to kill everyone in the valley -" _Don't ask her to believe he's a __**monster**__, at age nineteen!_ "He may have meant to target only the security force, the Knights of Jericho. But he wound up killing seventeen thousand people.

"And in an ironic twist, he undid his own triumph. He didn't fully understand how his powers worked. When he used them to kill all the living things in a certain area, all the dead things in that area were brought back to life! Including Brother Justin."

After a long, shocked silence, Lila said softly, "And somehow, _you_."

Lodz nodded. "Yes. I'd been lingering near Carnivale as a ghost. Out of concern for you, my dear." _What's one more lie?_ "But curiosity about New Canaan had taken me into the valley.

"My original body was gone, of course. But one of the newly available ones was evidently used as raw material. I was restored to life exactly as I'd left it - in my sixties, and blind." He made a face. "But under the circumstances, I could hardly complain."

"Uh, no." She hesitated. "But how could you possibly have anticipated that, when you told me you'd be back 'in the flesh'?"

Fortunately, he'd thought of an answer for that inevitable question. "I didn't anticipate what actually happened. But do you remember Apollonia's demanding to see me, the day before she died? The day before both of us died, as it turned out.

"She told me about strange visions she'd had - so strange that at the time, I thought her mind had finally snapped. Among other things, she said I'd be restored to life after I died. She didn't tell me I'd be dying soon, if she knew. And I didn't believe any of her ravings! But later, one after another of her predictions began coming true...and I became a believer."

He felt Lila shiver as she snuggled against him. "Appy always gave me the creeps," she admitted. "But I'm glad she was right about this!

"O' course, I wish it hadn't required Hawkins' killin' all them people..."

Stroking her beard - which he loved as much as ever - he gave a wordless murmur, implying he agreed with her.

In truth, he knew Sofie had killed the seventeen thousand - and brought Crowe back to life, quite deliberately. _Probably because she wanted to kill him herself. But she didn't have the mental strength to do it. Someone did intimidate her, but it wasn't Ben Hawkins._

His own "piggyback" revival, and any others, had been unplanned on Sofie's part. She was probably still unaware of them. _But I foresaw everything that would happen in New Canaan: that she'd discover her true nature, Hawkins would kill Crowe, she'd revive him (for one reason or another), and any ghost in the area would get a free ride. No "visions" needed, just understanding of the way these insipid young Avatars think._

Alas, he couldn't boast to Lila about his prescience. It was best she believe Hawkins had wrought all the havoc in California.

She said now, "But where have you been since then? I'm sure you weren't really bein' held prisoner by cultists in Mexico!"

He smiled. "No, of course not. But I did spend several months there, so I'll be able to describe my sojourn with the 'cult' believably.

"That wasn't the only reason I stayed away. I wanted to speak with Justin Crowe before I returned to Carnivale. To...discuss certain mutual interests. I sought to meet with him in the first weeks after our shared experience in New Canaan, but his right-hand man wouldn't let me near him." _Understandably. Crowe must have been dangerously close to a breakdown. He had to endure a period of ghost-viewing, the same as Ruthie. And he would have been seeing the ghosts of people he'd killed! But I'll keep that story to myself...a bit of inside knowledge that may someday stand me in good stead._

"So I took my side trip to Mexico," he continued, "then went back to California and tried again to arrange a meeting with Crowe. On that occasion, I fared better.

"I was most impressed with the good preacher. And I told him enough about myself to convince him that I'm no friend of Hawkins, and that I would be capable of, ah, _infiltrating_ Carnivale."

Lila sat up straight. "You're spyin' for Crowe?"

He was pleased to note that she sounded not disapproving, but intrigued.

" 'Spying' is such a vulgar word, my dear! I'm merely keeping tabs on his enemy for him, to spare him any more unwelcome surprises." He gave her beard a playful tug. "And speaking of surprises - remember my telling you Crowe has powers of his own? He also _pays quite well_."

He removed his dark glasses. "You're more beautiful than I ever imagined -"

As Lila fell on him with a whoop, he was trying to explain, "This is a secret. A _secret_, do you understand? I have special drops I can use to make my eyes still appear clouded, while not impairing my vision - Lila! Lila, stop screeching! Stop -"

And then she began doing things he decidedly _didn't_ want her to stop.

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The End


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